Walter was unsure of how to act around Stephanie after helping back to his base. On the walk back she was a whirlwind of questions and answers over everything that had led up to the apocalypse. How she had discovered her power three weeks ago after blue screens started appearing and the dead started rising. She called the humanoid beasts, zombies, and had a lot of theories about how they came to be but were all wrong. Her theories mostly dealt with a vaccine for a disease called Covid-19 causing mutations.

Arriving at the base Walter took her upstairs and handed her an MRE, a cot, and some water. She fell asleep almost instantly after she ate. While she ate, she didn’t stop talking about her last two weeks. She had escaped a group of men in her building but I had nothing to worry about. Zombies got them. Those same zombies were the same reason she was in a recycling bin for a week. The only reason she left her safe little bin was a quest called Follow to Safety when she saw him rappelling down the building. If she followed him all the way home, she would have gotten some bonus reward. She started to ask about what he knew about The System but she fell asleep midsentence.

He needed time to digest all the information Stephanie had bombarded him with. Determining that shoring up their defenses in case the horde came this with way. He went to work, pouring cement into wooden molds he built along the security bars. He would build this up higher after it cures then create murder holes for a little offensive. He worked at this for a few hours happy with his work as he saw Stephanie coming down the stairs.

“Walter? Is there anything I can help with?” Stephanie asked.

“No,” Walter replied brusquely as he walked away.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked him.

Walter just shrugged as began stringing empty cans up as a primitive alarm. Talking to her was harder than talking to the Doctor. The Doctor seemed to want to help him for some reason, Stephanie just talked about everything.

“You seem a little young but your wearing fatigues and you’re not very friendly. You are kind of like my cousin Derek when he came back from Iraq,” she said.

“That wasn’t a question,” he said immediately regretting it.

She muttered a word before asking what she was working up to, “Where is the military?”

Walter stopped what he was doing, he looked at what he was working on. Setting the alarm down he stood up and looked at Stephanie. He could see tears in her eyes changing how he wanted to respond.

“Sorry, I don’t know,” he said placing a hand on her shoulder. “I wish I did but I don’t.”

Stephanie shoved her face into his chest and started crying. Through her hiccups and sob, he could make out another question she was asking. “What about the people of that building?”

Walter knew what she was asking but he didn’t have an answer. There were too many humanoid beasts to be able to take them on with his limited weapons. He could try to bait them away but he wasn’t sure if he could get them all. Then he would need to still help the people on the roof get down.

Pushing Stephanie away he held her at arm’s length and asked her “I need you to tell me what your stats are and how much experience you have.”

Walter spent the next hour talking with Stephanie about The System, how to spend her experience, and how to get more information about her skills. When questioned about how he figured all this out, he only shrugged not knowing how to respond.

He learned that her quest following him had awarded her with 100 experience points. That one skill giving more experience than everything he earned with fighting was a slap in the face. He explained her need to spend those points, right before bed, evenly across all of her stats including skills to keep balanced. If one stat became too powerful and the others lagged behind could cause serious injuries.

After asking more about the skill she used to turn invisible and follow he discovered the weakness in it. She would only be invisible to her target at low levels, making it useless as a way to sneak around the horde. His original plan of baiting most of the horde away and her helping the survivors to escape was ruined. There were too many intelligent beasts to risk that.

Instead, he switched gears and asked about where they could get more food for their base. He hoped that he could find survivors near food if he couldn’t help the ones trapped by the horde. It made him feel like shit even thinking that but the academy did train pragmaticism. Not every battle would be winnable, not every person could be saved. It was horrible but Walter admitted to himself he couldn’t do anything to help them but he wouldn’t stop thinking about them.

As the sun began to set Walter hurried to the roof to watch it. Stephanie followed him up to the roof refusing to let him out of her sight. She watched him as he watched the sunset, annoying Walter.

“Do you need to stare at me?” he asked her. Turning his head to look back at her “You're ruining the mood.”

“Sorry,” she replied looking down “Your just kind of intense at times and then you’re not.”

“So,” Walter replied.

“You don’t need to be a dick about it, your just kind of weird is all,” Stephanie said crossing her arms.

“Sorry, but growing up I never saw stuff like this,” Walter said to her not thinking about that simple statement.

“What’s that mean,” Stephanie asked suddenly more interested in what he just said.

“Nothing,” Walter replied his voice cracking. Coughing a little “We need rest and you have first watch,” Walter said. He began heading inside not even watching the sunset end.

“What was that all about,” Stephanie said under her breath.

Walter walked her through everything she would do while he slept. His meticulous planned out routines meant Stephanie would stay busy until it was her turn to sleep. Walter set up this rigorous routine hoping to make Stephanie ok with being alone.

Walter needed her to be ok alone when he left in the morning.

Walter took his mirror to change his stats but set it down. He saw glasses marketed as protective wear near the bows. He wanted to try them as a way to access The System to see if it would work for him.

Putting them on he said his command prompt to pull up his screen on the inside of his glasses. It was a little disconcerting having the screen take his whole vision but this would work.

Name: Walter Freeman

Race: Human F-2 0/20

Titles: Exile of Valhalla

Experience: 32

Physical: F-2 0/20

Mental: F-1 0/10

Soul: F-1 0/10

Skills: Skitter F-2 0/20

Walter bit back the jealousy he felt about Stephanie getting so much experience rewarded for her quest. He would just have to move past that and increase what he could now. He needed to power up further if he wanted to thrive in other worlds. He decided in the morning he would go back to the hospital to look for more of the humanoid beasts.

Closing his eyes, The System putting him under to make the changes to his mental and soul stats. Stephanie sat with him watching him twitch in his sleep, wondering about who he really was. She questioned if she was safe with him, but The System deemed him safe. That quest was a lifeline she needed to keep sane. She prayed that Walter was a decent guy, not like some of the characters on her favorite show The Shambling Dead.

She looked at him one last time before choosing to get to work on all the little jobs he gave her.